Tracking of complex driving manoeuvres in traffic image sequences

It has been shown in previous publications (Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Computer Vision 1996 (ECCV '96), 14-18 April 1996, Cambridge, UK, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1065 (Vol. 11), Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 1996, pp. 388-399, pp. 485-494) that model-based tracking of partially occluded vehicles in image sequences can be significantly improved by incorporating optical flow measurements on the one hand and by explicitly modelling occlusions on the other hand. In this contribution, we slightly extend the first approach and combine it with the second in order to demonstrate that consequent exploitation of model knowledge will lead to robust tracking results even for complex driving manoeuvres, significant occlusions, low contrast and small vehicle images.